by C. J. Lyons
“You don’t like the water,” Justin noted as they waited. “It scares you. How come?”
No way was Morgan going to answer that, so she shot back, “How come the bogeyman scares you?”
Justin squinched his face so hard Morgan almost laughed. Then he beckoned her close, as if to tell her a secret.
When she bowed her head, he whispered, “He doesn’t scare me. I like him.” He placed a finger to his lips. “It’s a secret. You can’t tell anyone, okay?”
Whoa. Before Morgan could process the ramifications of that revelation, his mother and Kristyn returned, and Kristyn took his hand to lead him to the pool. Morgan pushed back up to her feet.
“He’ll be fine,” she said, mainly because some instinct told her that was the kind of thing people said when someone was nervous. Empty words, meaningless, but they seemed to help his mother.
She sighed and nodded. “He’s a good kid.” She looked up at the ceiling and blinked hard. “Especially after everything he’s been through. It’s amazing, really. Especially as I’m a wreck. I haven’t slept in months. I can’t stop worrying, terrified of what he’s going to do next.”
Months? That was before Justin’s car accident. “Terrified of Justin?”
“For him. Terrified of what his dad will do next.” She turned to Morgan, her face pinched. In that moment, she didn’t see Morgan as a kid or a patient but as someone she could confide in, someone who might help.
Morgan felt a rush of pride—funny, because she was pretty sure that in the past it would have been satisfaction, not pride. She would have felt pleased to have been able to fool a Norm into spilling their secrets. Now, though, as she saw how brittle this woman was, pale and thin as the last icicle of winter ready to surrender to gravity and crash to the ground, Morgan did want to help. “I heard about the car accident.”
“That was just the beginning. Or actually, the middle, I guess. As soon as I separated from Frank, it started. Have you ever been stalked?”
Morgan shook her head.
“The calls and texts at all hours, the security alarm going off at three in the morning, my car windows smashed, tires punctured so they blow when I’m in the middle of traffic on the Parkway—he didn’t even care that Justin might be with me. Thank goodness he wasn’t. We have a state of the art security system, but it doesn’t matter. He gets the codes and comes and goes as he wants.”
“He’s a security expert?”
Her laugh was as tightly strung as piano wire. “No. It’s much simpler than that. He just finds someone at the company to bribe. Lately, since Justin’s been here, I’ve woken up to the sound of his damn whistling, knowing he’s there, alone in the house with me.”
She shuddered. “You have no idea how horrible it feels to live every single moment in constant fear. Because I never know when or where the next attack will come from.”
Her gaze circled the room as if her ex were waiting in the shadows. Then it came to rest on Justin, laughing as Kristyn worked with him in the pool, and she stood straighter and pulled her fists to her hips. “That’s why we’re leaving. Tomorrow. I won’t let him put my son in danger ever again.”
Morgan applauded the woman’s maternal instincts, but her mind had snagged on one word. “Whistling?”
Justin’s mother rolled her eyes. “Frank loves to whistle. Show tunes, believe it or not—old ones, way before his time. When we first met, it was kind of charming, sweet. But now…”
“Now it’s like he’s the bogeyman,” Morgan whispered.
“Yes, exactly. How did you know?”
Morgan grabbed her walker. “Excuse me, I need to use the restroom.”
She almost tripped in her haste to get to the women’s locker room, her feet trying to go faster than the walker, one hand steering, the other fumbling to free her phone.
When she got into the locker room, there was a cleaning lady starting on the floor, so Morgan crossed to the other door that led out into the main corridor. By the time the door closed behind her, she’d managed to untangle her phone from the towel she’d wrapped it in.
She looked at it as if it were alien technology. Touched all the buttons until Micah’s face appeared. Tap to call, he’d said. She did and held the phone to her ear. To her relief, a few seconds later, his voice sounded. “Morgan, hey there.”
“I need you Jenna whistling—” She stopped to gulp down some air, her words tangled. Heaved in a breath, tried again. “Tell Jenna I know who the whistler is.”
“What’s a whistler? Are you okay?”
Right; she hadn’t had a chance to tell him about the bogeyman. No time now either. “Tell Jenna it’s—” Damn. She didn’t know Justin’s father’s last name. “Justin. His father. Frank.”
“I don’t understand. What’s happened? Should I call the police?”
What good would they do? “No. Tell Jenna.”
“Tell her the whistler is Justin’s father?” She heard the frustration in his voice—it was less than half of her own.
“His name is Frank.” Then she remembered—Justin’s patient ID. She raised the bracelet to her eyes, the letters and numbers dancing. Squinted and tried to focus on each one instead of making sense of the whole. “Frank H-a-l-e.” Exhausted, she leaned against the wall, clutching the phone. “Tell Jenna. Find him.”
“Frank Hale. Got it. I don’t like how you sound. What’s going on? Should I come get you out of there?”
Footsteps sounded down the corridor behind her. Morgan froze. They were the same footsteps she’d heard last night, before Honey died.
Freezing was what Sheep did, what made them prey. She turned to face the threat, inventorying her weapons: the walker, the two resistance bands, her phone with Micah still listening, the cleaning lady and her cart on the other side of the locker room door…
But her mind was too slow. The man stood across from her, blocking her path to the locker room door. Before she could lunge with the walker or find the words to tell Micah what was happening, he reached down and simply plucked the phone from her hand, turning it off.
“Patients aren’t allowed cell phones, Miss Ames,” John Lazarus told her.
He took her arm, dragging her out from behind her walker. “I believe it’s time we had that talk. About rules and consequences. And little girls who think they’re above the law.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jenna, Andre, and Nick drove away from the clinic, through the surrounding farmland, to a small diner that sat at the intersection with Route 22. The sun was just beginning to set, and the early bird special was chicken waffles with dumplings—Andre’s favorite, even if the beige food, starch ladled on top of starch, made Jenna grimace—so it was as good a place as any to strategize.
“What’s the plan?” Nick asked, after they’d eaten.
“I can’t believe you almost told her Lazarus said his syndrome was fatal,” Andre blurted out, before she could answer. “She doesn’t need that shit, not on top of everything else.”
“She deserves to know,” Jenna protested. “Wouldn’t you want to?”
“Not until it was certain. Hell, I still say Lazarus is the crazy one. This syndrome of his is just part of his delusion.”
“You can’t argue with his track record and results with his patients at Angels,” Nick said. “But I have to admit, I am skeptical about his syndrome. I mean, it does fit with a lot of research on post-ICU psychosis and how it oftentimes leaves permanent cognitive dysfunction, but I’ve never seen any research on catatonia resulting from it. Much less fatalities.”
“English, please,” Jenna asked him.
Nick hesitated. “I’m not certain if Dr. Lazarus’s syndrome is real or not. Let me ask the ICU guys and the neurologists at the VA and get more info. But I agree with Andre—we shouldn’t tell Morgan, not until we’re sure.”
Jenna disagreed. “I think this Lazarus Syndrome stuff is bullshit. You saw Morgan, how improved she is just since yesterday. She’s going to be fine. The
real question is, are those kids in danger?”
Both men exchanged glances and shrugged.
“We need to get back inside. Hide somewhere and watch,” Andre said. He fished out the sheaf of papers Morgan had given him. “Jenna, you correlate the data while Nick asks his doctor friends for more info on Lazarus. I’ll go back in.”
Before Jenna could argue—of the three of them, Andre was the least likely to blend in—her phone rang. Micah Chase.
“Morgan’s in trouble.”
She put the phone on speaker and set it on the table between them. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. She called—her speech was, well, you know, but she sounded upset.”
“What did she say?”
“She said to tell you the whistler was Justin’s father, Frank Hale. Does that make any sense? What the hell does whistling have to do with anything? Who’s Justin?”
“Where are you?”
“In my car. On the way back to the clinic.”
“Don’t go alone.” She gave him directions to the diner. “By the time you get here, we’ll have a plan.”
“But Morgan—”
“Did she ask you to come?”
“No. But—”
“Morgan can take care of herself. At least for now. But we can’t rush in there and risk the other kids.”
He hung up. While they waited for Micah, she grabbed her laptop and searched for Frank Hale. Nick and Andre used Nick’s computer to correlate the nurses’ schedules.
“This Hale guy is a real winner,” she told them. “His wife has a restraining order on him, the judge gave her full custody, she’s filed stalking and harassment charges, and all that was before he stole his kid, led the police on a high speed chase, and crashed.”
Andre looked up at that, his finger holding his place on the papers sprawled in front of him. “Crashed? With his kid in the car?”
“Told you, he’s a winner. But if he’s our guy, why would he kill Honey? She was at Angels months before his son, not even in the same ward. How could he target her?”
“How long has his son been there?” Nick asked.
“I remember seeing him when we first transferred Morgan there.” She remembered because the little boy had been in what she thought of as the “good kids” ward—the place with kids almost ready to go home. She’d heard the nurse laugh and call his name after he’d zoomed one of his trucks down the floor and out into the hall where it crashed. She’d stood and watched, wondering if Morgan would ever wake enough to function half as well as this five-year-old boy.
“So at least three weeks.”
“According to the news, the accident was the week before that, so somewhere in between three and four weeks.”
Nick clicked a few more keys and slid the top sheet of paper closer. He pushed his reading glasses up, sat back, and frowned. “I don’t think he’s our guy.”
“Really?” Andre said. “That whistling really seemed to spook Morgan.”
“I’m sure she heard him—or something. But the other deaths took place before his son arrived at Angels.”
“Maybe Honey did die from a seizure, and Morgan got confused—hearing Hale stalking the halls around the same time as Honey died? I mean, even though she was asleep, her mind could have absorbed enough sensory details and then mixed them all up, right?” Jenna looked to Nick for confirmation, knowing she was out of her depth. But after what he’d said about ICU psychosis, it made sense. “Maybe nothing bad actually happened to anyone, it was all just Morgan’s brain confusing things. Trying to make sense of random events.”
“Isn’t that exactly what Lazarus said she’d do?” Andre said, not sounding at all happy about it. “If she has his syndrome.”
They were all silent. No answers; just more questions.
A car pulled into the parking lot, and Micah Chase entered the diner. He spotted them and jogged over, radiating the relentless urgency of a teenaged boy in love.
“What did you find out? Are we going to get Morgan? What’s going on there? Why do you think she and the other kids are in danger?” The questions spilled out as he slid into the booth beside Jenna, nearly knocking her coffee into her laptop. “What’s the plan? How do we help her?”
Before Jenna could answer, Nick stopped typing and looked up. “Wait. I think I have something.”
“What?” she asked.
“Even though Lazarus signed all the death certificates, he wasn’t the doctor officially on duty during each of the deaths.” He tapped the nurses’ schedules where the bottom row listed the on-call physician for each date.
“Then who was?”
“Whose deaths?” Micah asked, while Andre scanned the schedules, his head slowly nodding as he turned each page.
“Paterson,” Nick answered.
“She’s the one who kicked me out, said I couldn’t come back or she’d have me arrested.” Micah slid back out of the booth. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
“No. Wait,” Jenna told him.
He tried to stare her down and failed, finally sliding back into his seat.
“You and I are going to find Frank Hale and talk to him.” Micah opened his mouth to protest, but she silenced him with a glance. “Give us a second. I’ll explain everything.”
“You want us to have a chat with Paterson?” Nick asked.
“You chat,” Andre said with a glower. “I’ll hulk. But we’re not leaving without Morgan.”
“And without making sure the other kids are safe,” Jenna said. “We don’t have any real evidence, and if we overplay our hand, we might endanger them. We only have one chance to get this right.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The corridor leading to the administration offices was dark, the offices all empty, everyone gone home for the night. Not even another cleaning person for Morgan to call out to. If she’d wanted to. That was the weird thing. Some slumbering part of her had been awakened by her surge of fear and adrenaline. And that part of her psyche urged her to submit.
Stay calm. Carry on. It’ll all be over soon, a sing-song voice rang out through her mind. Her voice. Followed by the sound of her father’s laughter.
As John Lazarus dragged her and her walker down the hall, Morgan couldn’t help but wonder if that voice was the voice of the little girl her father had trained to kill.
Or was it the little girl he’d trained to obey without question? Was her messed up mind somehow confusing John Lazarus with her father? Making her feel just as powerless, a puppet in his control… No, worse: a Fish dangling from a hook.
He kicked open his office door and shoved her walker in, then pushed her over the threshold. There was a wheelchair sitting empty inside the door—one equipped with soft restraints already tied to the frame, waiting open on the armrests.
He shoved her down into the chair, and before she could protest, had her arms pinioned and the restraints’ Velcro straps tightened, securing her to the chair.
“Why?” she asked, not raising her voice—wasn’t sure if she could; her throat felt so tight she could barely breathe. Her entire body shook, trembling in a way she’d never experienced before in her life—at least not that she could remember. Was this the fear her father’s victims had felt?
Morgan was a sociopath. Not meant to feel like this—her emotions had been burnt out of her psyche by her father years ago. She blew her breath out in a snort of frustration, and surprised herself when it emerged as a pitiful sob.
Stupid, damaged brain picked a fine time to heal those childhood wounds. She needed the old Morgan back. The callous, rational, always-in-control Morgan. Not this whimpering mess of an infant.
She needed to be a Wolf again. Not a Sheep or a Fish.
“Quiet or I’ll gag you,” John said.
He sat at his computer and fiddled with the keys, his face calm, his expression content. Morgan stared at him and realized why she hadn’t fought back harder—not that she could have won, not in her weakened condition.
; It wasn’t that John’s expression matched her father’s right before he went on one of his fishing expeditions. It was because John’s expression matched her own—that same calm, the sense of control, the serene concentration. Exactly what she used to see when she looked in the mirror.
Focus, focus. She needed a weapon. A way out of these restraints. In the past, she could pick the locks on handcuffs, break free of zipties and duct tape—and now she was stymied by a pair of Velcro wrist straps? Fear receded from anger and pride. No way.
As she worked to twist a hand free, rubbing the edge of the restraint against the arm of the wheelchair, John’s phone rang.
Before he answered it, he slid open a desk drawer and withdrew a pistol, aiming it at her face. She got the message and pressed her lips together tightly. A part of her—the one at war with the whimpering child fighting against panic—was intrigued and wanted to hear the conversation.
“John Lazarus, how can I help you?” His tone was that of a cheerful used car salesman. “A patient missing? Hang on, I’ll check.”
He click-clacked a few keys. “The RFID system is down again—I can’t track Miss Ames’s ID. Here’s what we’re going to do. You take your patients back to their ward and stay with them. Yes, I’ll approve the overtime. I’m locking down the facility. Once we have all our patients secured with staff in their wards, the security team and I will search the premises. I’m sure she can’t have gotten far. Right. Good. Oh, wait, is Mrs. Hale with you? We have an appointment to get a start on her son’s release paperwork. It’s why I stayed late tonight. Why don’t you send her down while I let Dr. Lazarus and Paterson know what’s going on? She’ll be more comfortable waiting in my office anyway. All right. Thanks, Kristyn.”
He hung up and leaned back in his seat. “That went well. I need to park you somewhere safe and get another wheelchair.” He stood and stretched, and then approached Morgan. “Let’s go.”